TH ESECONDUPR I SI N G : EN DO R NE WBEG I N N I N G ? RE M AHA M M A M I A N DSA L I MTA M A R I This article examines the al-Aqsa intifada against the background of the Oslo acc ords and the Camp Dav id summit. Com paring its features to those of the first intifada, it analyzes and develops a number of important differences. These include the structure of the clashes them- selves, the re ligi o us dimension, the role of the settl ements, the role of the media, and, most imp ortant, the pr esence on the ground o f a Pal- estinian pr otostate app aratus and the diminished role of mass organ i- zations and civil society. The authors end with a discussion of emerging trends within Palestinian politics in response to these events. TH E“SECO N DU PRI SI N G ” I SA NA PTD E SC R I PT I O Nof the clashes that engulfed the occupied territories as of late September 2000, and anyone who witnessed the inti fada of 1987–93 could not help but feel a sense of d´ ej ` a vu. The young men armed with stones facing the mightiest army in the Middle East, the grieving mothers, the nationalist symbols unfurled at martyrs’ funerals all seemed like a restaging of the same events twelve years earlier. Even the parades of masked youth carrying guns recall the final days of the first in- tifada. This time, however, the episodes were more condensed, the killings more b rutal, the reactions swifter, t he m edia coverage more intense. Within a matter of weeks, the language of the uprising had become the idiom of ev- eryday life. As i n th e fir st u pr ising, a dr am ati c ev en t in t he co nt ex t o f di pl om at ic s tale - mate sparked a reaction on the ground that was ripe for explosion. In 1987 the immediate trigger had b een a settler kill ing of a schoolg irl and the death of seven Palesti nian wo rkers in a Gaza car crash against t he background of a disappointing Arab summit; in 2000 it was Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Haram al-Sharif on 28 September and the shooting deaths of demonstrators at the site against the background of the Camp David (II) summit collapse in July. However, in both cases one should look beyond the sparks to the deeper factors that determined the sudden transition from a seemingly routinized system of control to widespread violence involving young men and women ready to give their lives for the sake of ending the status quo. RE M AHA MM A M I is an assistant professor of anthropology at Birzeit University and the coordinator of research at Birzeit’s Wom en’s Studies Center. S A L I MT A M A RI is the director ofIPS’s Jerusalem affiliate, the Institute of Jerusalem Studies. The authors wish to thank Beshara Doumani for his critical comments on this article, an earlier version of which appeared in MERIP in December 2000. Jo urna l of Pa les tine St udie sXXX , no .2 (Winte r 20 01 ), pp. 5- 25 .
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This article examines the al-Aqsa intifada against the background of
the Oslo accords and the Camp Dav id summit. Comparing its features
to those of the first intifada, it analyzes and develops a number of
important differences. These include the structure of the clashes them-
selves, the re ligious dimension, the role of the settlements, the role of
the media, and, most important, the presence on the ground o f a Pal-
estinian protostate apparatus and the diminished role of mass organi-
zations and civil society. The authors end with a discussion of
emerging trends within Palestinian politics in response to these
events.
THE“SECONDUPRISING” ISANAPTDESCRIPTIONof the clashes that engulfed the
occupied territories as of late September 2000, and anyone who witnessed
the intifada of 1987–93 could not help but feel a sense of deja vu. The young
men armed with stones facing the mightiest army in the Middle East, the
grieving mothers, the nationalist symbols unfurled at martyrs’ funerals all
seemed like a restaging of the same events twelve years earlier. Even the
parades of masked youth carrying guns recall the final days of the first in-tifada. This time, however, the episodes were more condensed, the killings
more brutal, the reactions swifter, the media coverage more intense. Within a
matter of weeks, the language of the uprising had become the idiom of ev-
eryday life.
As in the fir st uprising, a dramatic event in the context of diplomatic stale-
mate sparked a reaction on the ground that was ripe for explosion. In 1987
the immediate trigger had been a settler killing of a schoolgirl and the death
of seven Palestinian workers in a Gaza car crash against the background of a
disappointing Arab summit; in 2000 it was Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Haramal-Sharif on 28 September and the shooting deaths of demonstrators at the
site against the background of the Camp David (II) summit collapse in July.
However, in both cases one should look beyond the sparks to the deeper
factors that determined the sudden transition from a seemingly routinized
system of control to widespread violence involving young men and women
ready to give their lives for the sake of ending the status quo.
R EMA H AMMAMI is an assistant professor of anthropology at Birzeit University and the
coordinator of research at Birzeit’s Women’s Studies Center. S ALIMT AMARI is the director of IPS’s Jerusalem affiliate, the Institute of Jerusalem Studies. The authors wish to thank
Beshara Doumani for his critical comments on this article, an earlier version of whichappeared in MERIP in December 2000.
Journa l of Palestine Studies XXX, no . 2 (Winte r 2001), pp. 5-25.
The most crucial differences between the first and second uprisings lie in
the profoundly changed political and diplomatic context in which they took
place and in the consequences they produced. The first intifada broke out at
a time when there was no contact between the Palestinian national move-
ment and Israel, and little prospect of any. The PLO had been dispersed in
the aftermath of Israel’s military invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and the Israelimilitary was in full control of the daily lives of Palestinians throughout the
occupied territories under conditions of direct colonialism. The uprising
considerably enhanced the position of the “internal” political forces and the
status of a dynamic civil society and its mass organizations. It took the form
of a militant but essentially unarmed civil insurrection and succeeded in
bringing home to the Israeli military elite—and Israeli society at large—the
notion that Palestine could not be governed by colonial rule. It engaged a
large sector of Jewish society in a process of soul searching and, ultimately,
devolution. It also pushed the Palestine National Council formally to em-brace, at its November 1988 meeting in Algiers, the two-state solution based
on the 1947 United Nations partition plan.
At the time of the first intifada, the Palestinians were under Israeli rule but
had a dynamic civil society and an amorphous internal leadership (the Uni-
fied National Leadership of the Uprising—UNLU) that the PLO directed, or
attempted to direct, by remote control from Tunis. Today, there is a virtual
Palestinian state apparatus in situ ruling over a population that, after seven
years of the Oslo peace process, is penned up in disconnected fragments of
occupied territory encircled by ever-expanding settlements. The Palestinianentity is headed by the relocated and expanded PLO bureaucracy, a substan-
tial and armed security apparatus, and an elected parliament. Yet none of
these new players seems capable of acting at this critical juncture of Palestin-
ian history. Here we have a massive uprising supported by millions of view-
ers across the Arab world, galvanized into the street by some twenty satellite
stations, but with a limited participation by the Palestinian street itself. We
have an absent civil society, a token involvement of the opposition parties,
almost no guidance from the government, and a crying silence from the leg-
islative assembly. How can one account for this?
OS L O : OR I G I N A L DE C E I T O R BR O K E N PR O M I S E S?
The main political outcome (some would say achievement) of the first
intifada was the Oslo accords themselves. These include, among others, the
interim agreements, the Wye agreement, and the Hebron protocol under
Benjamin Netanyahu. They would have included the Camp David agree-
ments had the process continued along its bumpy path. How one reads
these agreements is fundamental to understanding the causes of the present
conflict. Early critics of Oslo, who saw the process as inexorably leading to a
consolidation of the occupation either as a new system of apartheid1 or as
“occupation by remote control,”2 most likely see in the current crisis vindica-
tion of their analysis. More important, however, is how the political leader-
ships who signed the agreements understood them, and how, over time, the
various Israeli governments actually changed their meaning .
The broad log ic of Oslo was that a phased devolution of Israeli rule over
the West Bank and Gaza would take place, at the end of which the deferred
thorny issues of settlements, refugees, and Jerusalem would be negotiated aspart of a final status agreement. Besides the original withdrawal of Israel
from Jericho and Gaza in May 1994, three redeployments by Israel from the
West Bank would be undertaken during the five-year transitional phase.
Though the various agreements are not explicit on the amount of West Bank
land to be returned under the three redeployments, the Palestinian Authority
(PA) and the Palestinian supporters of Oslo widely assumed (and arguably
were led to believe by the Rabin government) that they would comprise all
of the 1967 occupied territories save for areas to be addressed in final status
deliberations (Jerusalem and settlements) as well as for the vaguely defined“military installations.”
This optimistic reading of the transitional period first ran into trouble with
the miserly second redeployment under Netanyahu. However, in line with
the American administration’s thinking, optimists could still believe that a
return of the Labor party would mark a return to the “original spirit” of the
agreement. Ehud Barak’s election as prime minister in 1999 was therefore
welcomed. But the optim ists, among other things, failed to take into account
the fact that Barak, as interior minister in the Rabin government, had actually
voted against Oslo, at a time when faith in the agreement was at its peak.
C A M P D A V I D
Barak refused to carry out the third redeployment that he himself had re-
negotiated under the Sharm al-Shaykh agreement of September 1999, insist-
ing instead on moving directly to final status talks. This meant that when the
Camp David summit was held between 11 and 25 July outside Washington,
the PA was forced to negotiate permanent status issues with only 42 percent
of the territory under its full or partial control (full control of 18 percent—the
urban centers of area A; joint control over 24 percent —the villages and other
built-up areas of area B). The original understanding that withdrawal from
the vast majority of the occupied territories would be completed during the
transitional period as a prerequisite to final status was now transformed into
withdrawal being linked to major Palestinian concessions on final status is-
sues. This shift represented the inevitable outcome of the massive power
imbalance between the two sides that has defined the logic of Oslo all along.
Here it should be noted that the Palestinian leadership had implied in its
political discourse from the outset a sharp distinction between the conces-
sions they were forced to make during Oslo’s transitional phase (concerning
internal mobility, bypass roads, economic arrangements, water sharing, and
so on) and the “red lines” on core issues once the talks on final status began.
Thus the leadership presented the initial disappointments of Oslo as contin-
gencies imposed by the need to bring the PLO home from exile and to con-
solidate an autonomous Palestinian entity, after which it could embark on
the protracted struggle for statehood from its new home base.3 As the con-
cessions and failures of the transitional period continued to mount, logically
the leadership would be forced to adhere ever more strongly to these Pales-tinian red lines at the final status talks.4 On one level, then, the breakdown of
Camp David was the product of the clash between these two contending
logics: the Israeli expectation of Palestinian concessions on final status issues
in return for greater land area versus the Palestinian leadership’s inability to
concede much on final status after having conceded so much during the
transitional period.
On specific issues, however, major differences of opinion surround what
happened at Camp David. In the immediate aftermath of the summit, the
official Israeli view (echoed by the Clinton administration) prevailed, accord-ing to which the talks failed because of the Palestinians’ rejection of Barak’s
“generous offers.” The more immediate reason for the breakdown under this
widely diffused version was Jerusalem , especially Israel’s demand for some
form of sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif. More recently, a range of anal-
yses have emerged about the content of the Israeli offers, the causes of the
breakdown of talks, and most important, the larger tactical strategies under-
lying Israel’s behavior at the talks.
Jerusalem Although Barak announced in a public interview at the end of Septem ber
that he favored the creation of two capitals in Jerusalem for two states,5 the
essence of the Israeli offer for Jerusalem at Camp David makes clear what he
meant by this. According to Menahim Klein, adviser to chief Israeli negotia-
tor Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel would annex the main settlements in and around
East Jerusalem (French Hill, Gilo, Givat Ze’ev, Har Homa, Ma’ale Adumim,
Pizgat Ze’ev, and Ramot) and would expand the Greater Jerusalem area as
far south as Gush Etzion near Hebron. The outlying Arab suburbs of East
Jerusalem (including Bayt Hanina, Shu‘fat, and Walaja) would form an outer
ring with full Palestinian sovereignty, while the Arab neighborhoods imme-
diately outside the Old City (including Shaykh Jarrah, Silwan, and Wadi al-
Juz) would comprise an “inner ring” that would have an expanded form of
autonomy. Muslim and Christian holy sites and the Arab neighborhoods in-
side the Old City would also have this expanded form of autonomy, but
Israel would retain overall sovereignty.6 Within this arrangement, Metropoli-
tan Jerusalem would be divided into an Arab and an Israeli municipality
while remaining an open city, with no international borders and checkpoints
marking the ethnic boundaries.7 This, in essence, is what Barak’s stated sup-
port for “two capitals” amounts to.
Though the account of Akram Hanieh, one of the Palestinian advisers at
Camp David, differs somewhat on the status of the Old City,8 the Hanieh and
cans. Such a coalition would be acceptable to the Americans only if the
Palestinians became belligerent.
Whatever Israel’s intentions, the proposal of shared sovereignty over the
Haram represented a critical moment in the negotiations in which the relig-
ious issue—and specifically, control over a highly contested sacred site—was
raised and then thrown into the public arena. Israel’s raising the issue, andthen granting police protection to Sharon to visit the site, is what linked the
humiliating historic deal represented by Camp David to the provocative
event that galvanized the street. In this process, it was inevitable that protests
would take on a religious character.
A N UN T E N A B L E SIT U A T IO N
The deeper backdrop to the current uprising is the actual experience of
Oslo on the ground by the population of the West Bank and Gaza. The mainfeatures of the extended interim phase have resulted in a situation that is
untenable for most and unbearable for hundreds of thousands. Importantly,
this situation did not improve under Ehud Barak’s tenure but was exper-
ienced predominantly as a deepening of negative processes accelerated
under Netanyahu. What are these processes?
First was the continued bifurcation of the West Bank from Gaza, despite
the fact that Oslo stipulates the need to “maintain [their] territorial integrity
. . . as a single territorial unit.” Movement between the two areas has re-
mained almost completely restricted save for small sectors of the politicalelite and, to a lesser extent, large merchants. While some 100,000 commuting
workers (less than 5 percent of the population) can get permits to work in
Israel proper, they (like the rest of the population) are denied permits to
travel to the other part of the occupied territories. The long awaited “safe-
passage” arrangements, finally implemented in part in 1999, turned out to be
the hated permit system in a new guise.
Within the West Bank and Gaza (and particularly in the former), built-up
areas have become segmented from each other and from the land surround-
ing them. These so-called autonomous zones are marked off by Israeli by-
pass roads (for the use of settlers only) and by security zones controlled by
the Israeli army (area C) making it possible for each area to be cut off at will.
Only within the municipal boundaries of towns does the population not live
directly under Israeli military control. For those living in village municipali-
ties (area B) and the even unluckier populations living outside municipal
boundaries (area C), direct Israeli military occupation continues.
This whole configuration of strategic settlement expansion and bypass
roads has fragmented the West Bank. It has resulted in the virtual removal of
Jerusalem from the Palestinian map by denying Palestinians access to the
city and by ringing it with vast fortified colonies that not only separate Jeru-
salem from its West Bank suburban hinterland but effectively divide the
West Bank into two major zones, north and south.14 Accompanying the in-
tensive Judaization of Greater Jerusalem through the import of tens of
thousands of settlers from inside Israel (and from among new Jewish immi-
grants) has been the bureaucratic campaign aimed at transferring Palestinian
residents out of the city by revoking their residency permits.
During the period 1998 to 2000, this internal segmentation of the West
Bank and Gaza intensified with the accelerating settlement expansion andthe scramble to consolidate disconnected settlements into major blocs so as
to ensure their survival beyond final status. Most pernicious is the way in
which the lightly populated area C, which constitutes the majority of Pales-
tinian agricultural land, has effectively become an area up for settler grab.
Land confiscation for settlement expansion in area C has gone hand in hand
with accelerated house demolitions to encourage further depopulation,
while settler attacks against farmers trying to harvest the olive crop during
the 1999 and 2000 seasons have become routine occurrences.15
TH E T W O IN T I F A D A S
While it is this overall situation that led to the current uprising, various
elements have had specific consequences shaping this intifada’s character
and direction in ways that make it qualitatively different from the preceding
one. For instance, at the logistical level, the first intifada involved clashes
within the urban centers between the civilian population at large and the
Israeli army and border police. It was therefore more widespread and more
difficult to control. The present uprising—except in Jerusalem and except forthe early clashes in Israel’s mixed cities—is largely made up of confronta-
tions at the military checkpoints that either mark the entrances of Palestinian
towns or are used to control settlement roads (Netzarim Junction) and relig-
ious sites (Joseph’s Tom b, Rachel’s Tomb). The main result of this new geog-
raphy is that the Israeli army is better able to confine the insurgency to
specific sites and to protect itself in secure strategic locations. This geogra-
phy of the “battle front” has also made possible the greater militarization of
the clashes. Uri Avneri points out that while the military announces its use of
attack helicopters, missiles, and tanks, it is silent about its main weapon:
snipers. “The sharpshooter is trained to look at a crowd of demonstrators,
choose a target, take aim, and hit the head or upper body.”16 The majority of
the more than 300 Palestinians killed have died in this manner.
Another difference from the first intifada is the existence of armed Pales-
tinian security forces (with about 40,000 Palestinian police under arms).
Among other things, this allows for greater justification for the use of Israeli
military force, even though official Palestinian security forces have been in-
volved in clashes only rarely. Instead, the majority of armed actions have
been led by “Fatah tanzim ,” a murky designation that includes Fatah’s street
cadre (often with privately licensed weaponry) and by elements of the PA
Preventive Security Force.17 Armed Palestinian action succeeded in clearing
the Israeli military from only one site, Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, which, given
its vulnerability, could arguably have occurred without their intervention. In
most other cases where armed cadres got involved in clashes in the midst of
civilian demonstrations, there were soon popular calls for their retrench-
ment, since the main result was that Israeli sharpshooters could exact a
higher price.18
During the second month of the uprising, Palestinian military actions(under the rubric of the tanzim ) took a new strategic turn, focusing less on
demonstrations and more on settlements (especially Gilo, Netzarim, and
Psagot). Indeed, the prominence of settlers and settlements as major compo-
nents of the current clashes represents another important difference be-
tween the two uprisings. In the first, the unarmed population was fearful of
incurring the wrath of the well-armed and state-supported settlers, and thus
clashes rarely targeted them. However, it is not just a lowered fear quotient
that accounts for the change in the present uprising. In the twelve years since
the first intifada, the number of settlers has dramatically increased, and settle-ment expansion has often been into the vicinities of Palestinian urban cen-
ters. The acceleration of settler land grabs and violence against the
Palestinian inhabitants of area C have likewise galvanized the population.
Settlements have become concretely understood by both sides as the corner-
stone of Israel’s ability to hold on to vast areas of the West Bank and Gaza
beyond final status and to perpetuate its military presence.
While Hamas emerged as a major force during the first intifada, the relig-
ious character of that uprising was relatively muted. In comparison, religion
has played a major mobilizing and symbolic role in the current uprising,even while the participation of Hamas has been largely confined (at least to
the time of writing) to raising Hamas flags at funeral processions.19 Instead,
the clashes have been dominated by secular groups (mainly Fatah, but with
a visible presence of the Popular Front and other leftist organizations).
Nevertheless, with al-Aqsa as the main trigger for the uprising, religious
fervor has been a salient dimension that at times has engulfed the entire con-
flict. This can be witnessed in the political idiom of the street and in the PA’s
sudden emphasis on Islamic themes in the struggle over Jerusalem. It can
also be seen in reactions by the Israeli street. Following the Palestinian as-
sault on Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, Israelis burned mosques in Tiberias and
Acre and attempted burnings in Jaffa; Palestinians then burned the Jericho
synagogue. At the start of the uprising’s third week, several imams used the
Friday sermon—widely broadcast on Palestinian TV on 13 October—to em-
phasize the Muslim-Jewish dimension of the conflict. In Gaza and Nablus,
Hamas elements attacked several cafes and stores selling alcoholic bever-
ages. While the only official response to the sectarian incidents came from
the PA’s information minister, who condemned them and called for national
unity,20 many Palestinian intellectuals voiced opposition to this turning of
the national conflict into a communal one.21 One negative aspect of the cur-
rent intifada has been the diminution of the national and secular and the
enhancement of the confessional and sectarian aspects of the struggle.
The religious dimension is what initially galvanized Palestinian Israelis
and led to a wave of clashes inside Israel. In contrast to the first intifada, the
intensity and extent of Palestinian mass protest inside Israel led to a major
rupture between Arab and Jewish citizenry as the former were accused of
attempting to “erase the Green Line” or, worse, of constituting a fifth col-
umn.22 During the first week of the confrontations, fourteen Arab protestersinside Israel were killed. This was followed by pogrom-like attacks on Pales-
tinians in the city of Nazareth and major clashes between Arabs and Jews in
Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, and Lydda. For the first time since the Land Day events of
1976, major Israeli roads in the vicinity of Arab villages in the Galilee, and
even the coastal highway (near Jisr al-Zarqa), were cut off for days on end.
The intensity of these protests is also symptomatic of the failures of Oslo for
Palestinians inside Israel. Exclusion from the very terms of the peace process
has led to the rise of a new political focus on full civic integration into the
Israeli state. The ongoing failure of the Israeli polity and political leadershipto move beyond its traditional approach to its Arab citizenry and take steps
toward making Israel “a state for all its citizens” is the cr itical underpinning
of the protests that took place.
Another major difference between the two intifadas is the role of the me-
dia, which have played various and contradictory roles in the current events.
During the earlier uprising, the population had access only to Israeli and, to
a lesser extent, Jordanian or Egyptian broadcast media. And except for Sawt
al-Quds, the short-lived pirate radio station of Ahmad Jibril, Palestinians dur-
ing the first intifada had only the heavily censored local newspapers through which to disseminate their own views and analyses—hence the dependence
on “guerrilla media” such as leaflets and graffiti to give political directives to
the street. This time, of course, there is the presence of Palestinian official
media (Palestine TV and radio), myriad local independent TV and radio sta-
tions, and—perhaps most significant—the Arab satellite stations. Given the
lack of an articulated PA strategy for the intifada, the official media have not
been used to provide direction or instructions to the general populace. In-
stead, their role has been predominantly mobilizational, providing a con-
stant flow of reportage on events interspersed with nationalist music and
iconography. This being the case, Israel’s aerial bombing of PA TV and radio
installations had no strategic purpose.23
Unquestionably, it is the Arabic satellite stations that have had the greatest
impact on the street. Due to the low cost of locally produced satellite dishes,
the satellite stations have become an ubiquitous feature of the landscape. Al-
Jazeera (Qatar), al-Mustaqbal and LBC (Beirut), MBC (London), and ANN
(Spain) have become household names, and almost all have well-known lo-
cal correspondents. They provide professional and almost constant coverage
of the situation on the ground and, as important, a steady stream of discus-
sions with Palestinian and Arab analysts and leaders. Indeed, these stations
(particularly al-Jazeera) have helped define for the local population the
The satellite stations have also contributed to regionalizing the uprising in
two important ways. On the one hand, they have played a pivotal role in
mobilizing Arab public opinion by providing intensive coverage far beyond
what is allowed on state-run television. This has resulted in a far greater de-
gree of popular Arab protest and solidarity than occurred in the first in-
tifada.24 This powerful image of Arab mass solidarity is then projected backinto the West Bank and Gaza via the satellites. As a result, not since the hey-
day of Nasirism have Palestinians felt that the entire Arab world (if not the
regimes) is with them. On the negative side, the Arab media have at times
contributed to the notion that the uprising is a religious rather than national
struggle.
Faris Odeh, 13, faces off against an Israeli tank at Qarni crossing in
Gaza on 10/29. He died in a similar clash 10 days later. (AP Photo/
Laurent Rebours)
One major disappointment during the current uprising has been the al-
most total failure to get a fair hearing for the Palestinian side in the Western
media. The poignant image of young Muhammad al-Dura cowering behind
his father under a hail of bullets was powerful enough to speak for itself, but
this was soon superseded by the far more numerous images of the lynching
of tw o Israeli soldiers in Ramallah. The lack of a PA media strategy for posi-
tively influencing Western public opinion is not new or surprising given that
historically Palestinian leaders have rarely viewed the Western public as an
important part of the political map.
As with the first intifada, the continued dependence of the Palestinian
economy on Israel is a major vulnerability that can and has been used by
Israel to suppress long-term resistance. However, a major difference this
time is that in addition to the old vulnerabilities (reliance on Israeli water andelectricity networks; dependence on Israeli labor markets, which up until the
recent clashes absorbed approximately 20 percent of the Palestinian work
force), there are a host of new ones that have emerged as part of the Oslo
process. For example, there is now a substantial public sector employing
some 150,000 persons who rely directly on the PA for their salaries. But 63
percent of the PA’s revenues derive from the VAT taxes that are to be paid by
Israel under the shared customs regime that was part of the Oslo package,25
and Israel has effectively frozen these payments since October, making con-
tinuing payment of the salaries uncertain.26
Other interests that haveemerged since Oslo are equally vulnerable. These include the small but in-
fluential “new economic class” that has emerged under Oslo that, through
strong ties to the political leadership, has had a privileged entree into the
“private sector.” Perhaps the best-known example of the new interests is the
Jericho casino, which until its closure in late October (and subseque nt straf-
ing by Israeli helicopter gunships) had raked in millions every week for its
private and semipublic Palestinian investors and their Austrian partners.
Along with the casino are a number of new businesses such as hotels and
resorts, advertising and telecommunications companies, and major con-tracting firms that have grown thanks in part to donor infrastructural invest-
ments. These all represent major capital investments that are now under
threat. More important, they represent the economic interests of a class with
political clout. Whether these interests will ultimately seek to bring a quicker
end to the uprising is yet to be seen but is not unlikely.
Also vulnerable to Israeli economic collective punishment are the “invest-
ments in peace” funded by major international donors, which have prolifer-
ated since the first intifada (when the only major international agencies
present were UNRWA and to a lesser extent the UN Development Program).
Multilateral and bilateral, transnational and national, and governmental and
nongovernmental organizations have invested c lose to $3 billion since 1994
to shore up the peace process and in various projects. During the first two
months of the al-Aqsa intifada, Palestinian losses (excluding property dam-
age) reached, according to the UN Special Coordinator’s Office (UNSCO),
$505 million, or more than 2.5 times the value of donor disbursements to the
PA during the first half of the year.27 Though emergency donor money is
beginning to trickle in, at some point the continued wastage of their long-
term economic investments may lead them to rethink their involvement.
As in the first intifada, it is the general populace that bears the economic
brunt of Israel’s economic collective punishment. UNSCO, which monitors
long-term economic trends in Palestine, noted that core unemployment
since the crisis had risen from less than 11 percent to nearly 30 percent,
which, when the effects of disruption in normal internal economic activity in
Palestine are taken into account, reaches at least 40 percent.28 In all, accord-
ing to the report, the number of Palestinians enduring some amount of eco-
nomic distress is 1,370,000, or 45.5 percent of the population.
But if the Palestinian economy is vulnerable because of its underdevelop-ment, the Israeli side is vulnerable for the opposite reasons—for its heavy
integration into the global “new economy” and its consequent dependence
on outside investors (which in turn requires projecting an image of reliability
and stability). By the second week of the uprising, the Israeli stock market
plummeted by 50 percent, suggesting the extent to which intifada-type in-
surrections can undermine Israeli economic stability and, perhaps as impor-
tant, its sense of Western-style normalcy. The intifada’s impact is already
deeply felt in the winter tourist season, the agricultural sector, and the con-
struction sector. The Palestinians suffer far greater physical and humanlosses, but their secret weapon lies precisely in their undeveloped economy
and the range of survival strategies that households have developed over at
least the past fifteen years.
A W E A K E N E D CI V I L SO C I E T Y A N D A N A B S E N T ST A T E
The more militarized nature of the confrontations and the new geography
of resistance cannot entirely explain one of the major differences between
this and the previous intifada: the absence of a wider civil rebellion . This may be the uprising’s Achilles’ heel. Save for massive candlelight marches and
funeral processions within the cities, the population at large has been left
with virtually no active role in the uprising. This is clearly not by choice, but
as a consequence of the fact that the kinds of political structures that made
grass-roots organizing the main thrust of the first in-
tifada, at least in the early years, no longer exist. Pop- Save for massive
ular and neighborhood committees as well as mass candlelight marches and
organizations (and most of the political movements funeral processio ns within
that sustained them) began to collapse at the end of the cities, the population at
the first intifada under the cumulative weight of Is- large has been left with
raeli anti-insurgency methods. Their recovery was virtually no active role in
preempted by the Gulf War and, even more pro- the uprising.
foundly, by Oslo and the state formation process it set
in motion.29 The demobilization of the population
and their deepening alienation from political action (until the current upris-
ing) has been one of the most salient outcomes of PA rule.30
In the current situation, the only structures remaining to organize civil re-
sistance are the now “professionalized” nongovernment organizations
(NGOs) and what is left of the political factions. In terms of the NGOs, their
structural limitations (professional organizations lacking a mass base) and
programmatic emphasis on developmental and governance issues have
made them incapable of organizing at the mass level.31 Similarly, the mass-
mobilizational role of the political factions (except for Fatah and to a lesser
extent Hamas) has been virtually obliterated by their post-Oslo organiza-
tional and political crises, from which they have never recovered.
Ironically, along with the absence of “civil society,” the other absence in
the current uprising is that of the political leadership in a c learly articulatedorganizational role. Throughout the first month, no directives emanated from
the PLO Executive Committee, the PA Executive Authority, or the Palestinian
Legislative Council (PLC), none of which even convened.32 In contrast, dur-
ing the first intifada, the PLO leadership in Tunis rode the tide of the uprising
and gave it essential political momentum through various kinds of logistical
support as well as strategic direction provided by Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Ji-
had), at the time the commander of the PLO’s “Western Front,” which were
transmitted through local Fatah cadres and the UNLU.
The apparent absence of the state in the current uprising is even morestartling in view of the fact that the PLO in the intervening years has consoli-
dated itself inside Palestine and built a complete protostate apparatus there.
Yet, paradoxically, it is this very presence on the ground that explains its
virtual invisibility. Entering into the drawn-out process of Oslo is what ena-
bled the leadership to return, and the pivotal element of that trade-off was
the role the PA would play in security matters. Thus, for Israel and the United
States, “security cooperation” was the jewel in the crown of the increasingly
security-driven Oslo accords. In this context, the repeated calls for Arafat to
“stop the violence” not only implied his responsibility for starting it but werepremised on the assumption that he was in violation of the fundamental role
assigned to him by Oslo. The warnings can also be read as a way of demand-
ing that security cooperation be reinstated, for the unannounced but actual
cessation of security cooperation was probably the most powerful message
that the PA could send to Israel.
Arafat did not start the current wave of protests, but it is clear that he has
encouraged them by, among other things, standing back and allowing them
to escalate. Moreover, while the PA has not formally taken charge of the
intifada, it is in fact by no means uninvolved. Indeed, the very nature of its
strategy of rule allows for its involvement through various “autonomous”
bodies—most notably through the Fatah tanzim (which is not an official
structure of the PA) and, to a lesser extent, through elements of the security
apparatus. It should be noted that Fatah’s complex relationship to state
power (and the links of many of its street cadres with the security services) is
likely to entail restrictions on the intifada’s expansion into the civil arena due
to its tendency to give priority to armed action rather than to organizing civil
rebellion.
A number of critical analysts have identified PA rule as fundamentally
based on the model of the PLO in Lebanon adapted to the specifics of the
West Bank and Gaza. The essence of this argument is that the PLO in Leba-
non, as part of its mobilizational effort, conflated civil and political society in
lost their mass support, being perceived as having fossilized leaderships that
have been absorbed in various ways into the PA system of rule. The excep-
tions in effectiveness are Fatah, which, as the state party with access to pa-
tronage and clout, has expanded rather than contracted since the Oslo
accords, and Hamas, which, as the main opposition to Oslo, has remained
until now outside of the PA’s circle. But Hamas, with its history of victimiza-tion by the PA, has been reluctant to take a central role in the uprising: as
already noted, its role has receded even as its religious discourse has been
adopted (albeit in altered form). At the organizational level of the street,
then, Fatah will continue to be the main political movement in the intifada.
While the NIHC has attempted to give the intifada “direction,” it is clear
that the wave of protest has a dynamic of its own. More specifically, as in
most popular revolts, multiple and often contradictory political processes
are at work. Thus, the current rebellion has probably
Arafat knows that since the increased the popularity of Arafat, but at the same1996 Tunnel Intifada, the time it has enhanced the role of Fatah not as the party
street will never again of the PA but as a popular force able to mobilize the
allow him to trade street and lead it in confrontation against the Israeli
Palestinian lives for a mere military and the settlers. An implicit bargain has been
resumption of negotiations. struck. Arafat knows that since the 1996 Tunnel In-
tifada, the street will never again allow him to trade
Palestinian lives for a mere resumption of negotiations. And it is this that
makes it impossible for the PA to attempt to rein in the uprising before gain-
ing a concrete victory on the ground. As long as Arafat sticks to this rule of not intervening, his popular support will remain intact.
Underlying this understanding, however, is the growing criticism of the
PA’s inability to provide basic organizational and logistical support to the
civilian population during the clashes. The public has been provided with no
basic civil defense or civil emergency directives, and there is no indication
that the PA is prepared for critical eventualities such as water and electricity
cuts or gasoline shortages. Nor can there be much confidence in the ability
of a government known for corruption to deal with the population’s mount-
ing economic losses. All these failures—which cannot be compensated for
by the limited vision and capabilities of the NIHC—are seen as signs of PA
incompetence or, worse, neglect. The current rebellion will be a crucial test
in reestablishing the PA’s credentials as an effective government—which so
far it has failed to do—and in determining whether or not it can carry on with
its proclaimed role as the historic leadership of a national liberation
movement.
TH IR D R E D E P L O Y M E N T O R A MI L I T A R Y -L E D ST A L E M A T E ?
As the intifada entered its third month, it was possible to speak of two
contrasting trends within Palestinian politics in response to the events. The
first called for utilizing the political gains of the uprising (increased Arab sup-
port, the isolation of settlements, heightened criticism of Israel, and Euro-
pean sympathy) to raise the ceiling of reconvened Camp David–style
negotiations in which the Palestinians would be able to extract better condi-
tions than those existing in July. This seems to be the position of Mahmud
Abbas (Abu Mazin) and the majority of the Palestinian leadership who have
participated in negotiations. A second trend, calling for the continuation of the intifada, the enhancement of its mass base, and institutional reform
within the PA (including new parliamentary elections), was exemplified by
the more militant wing of Fatah and the opposition parties.36 Arafat, while
not yet allying himself with either trend, seems to be playing a wait-and-see
game: though he will doubtless allow the militant trend to continue (unless
the calls for internal political reform become too trenchant), he is likely to
switch back to negotiations if the time seems right or if the militants reach an
impasse.
Meanwhile, as already noted, a shift had begun to appear during the sec-ond month away from the daily toll of young demonstrators at the seams
between areas A and B (mostly the borders of urban centers and at the ap-
proaches of Israeli army posts) to hit-and-run operations against settlements
and settlers. The net effect of this shift has been an increase in the number of
injuries and fatalities among settlers and soldiers, and an “improvement” in
the ratio of Israeli to Palestinian deaths (still about 1:15, but lower than the
earlier 1:20). Thus, what began as an uprising for al-Aqsa and Palestinian
control over Jerusalem has increasingly become a battle against the settle-
ments. Within Palestinian discourse there is now a noticeably firmer stand onthe total evacuation of the settlements. Inside Israel, significant voices,
spearheaded by several statements issued by Peace Now throughout No-
vem ber and into December, began to call for withdrawal from the settle-
ments, including an immediate dismantling of those in Gaza.37 A survey
conducted by Dahaf on 5 December 2000 indicated that fully 63 percent of
the Jewish public supported total or partial evacuation of Jewish settlements
from the occupied territories.38
Judging from public statem ents made by major PA figures, it would ap-
pear that the leadership has begun to introduce into the logic of the intifada
both strategic goals and strategic methods for achieving them. The most ex-
plicit articulation of these goals was by Information Minister Yasir ‘Abid Rab-
buh at a 5 November rally in Ramallah. After observing that the intifada
should be transformed into a peaceful means of protest and that the use of
gunfire should be abandoned in view of the disastrous retribution from the
Israelis, he delineated three central objectives for the uprising: the resump-
tion of peace negotiations on the basis of withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries
(rather than on the basis of trade-off of territories); broadening the sponsor-
ship of the negotiations to inc lude other partners besides the United States,
such as the European Union, Egypt, and Jordan (and possibly Russia); and
the establishment of an international presence in Palestine to protect the ci-
vilian population as a prelude to a trusteeship over the territor ies while their
punishment and anti-insurgency measures mobilized against them. Where
the population may be short on organization or initiative, it has shown itself
over fifty years to be long on the stubborn ability to survive under punishing
circumstances. While all signs suggest that the population is willing to go
through this again, and the leadership is banking on their ability to do so, the
significant difference this time is that the population is less likely to allow theleadership a free hand in investing the outcome of this second intifada in a
manner that will replicate the Oslo predicament.
NO T E S
1. Edward Said, Peace and Its Discon- confirm that Arafat made it clear that he
tents (New York: Vintage, 1996). would not sign an agreement declaring
the end o f the conflict as long as the right2. Meron Benvenisti, Intimate Ene-
of return was not realized. At most, hemies: Jews and Arabs in a Shared Land
would be ready to sign a statement de-(Berkeley: University of California Press,claring that there were no more claims on1995).the subjects regarding which agreement3. The most elaborate discussion of had been reached.”this position can be found in Mamdouh
11. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “DifferentNofal, Qissat Itiffaq Uslu (The Oslo Aspects of the B loody Events,” Between Agreement) (Amm an: Ahliyya Publishers ,
the Lines (Jerusalem), November 2000,1995). See, especially, “Peace or Settle-pp. 10–14.ment?” pp. 289–98.
12. Quoted by Raz-Krakotzkin, “Differ-4. In a lecture at Ramallah on 24 Oc-ent Aspects,” p. 12.tober 2000, Azmi B ishara pointed out that
the “Palestinian red lines,” a term often 13. Ibid.repeated by both Arafat and his oppo- 14. For a discussion of these issues,
nents as guidelines for peace negotia- see Salim Tamari, “Jerusalem’s Unsacredtions, were never taken seriously by the Geography,” in Capital Cities and Urban
Israelis, who saw them as mere rhetoric, Gov ernance in the M iddle East , ed.particularly where Jerusalem and settle- Seteney Shami (Toronto: University of To-ments were concerned. Reported in al- ronto Press, forthcoming 2001).Hayat al-Jadida , 25 October 2000. 15. A systematic record of clashes be-
5. Quoted in al-Quds , 28 September tween farmers and settlers during the sec-2000. ond uprising is available at
6. These details are based on an inter- www.alternativenews.org/ view with Menachem Kle in, published by settlers_violence.Graham Usher in Publico (Lisbon), 14 16. Avneri maintains that the IDF hadSeptember 2000. been training for mon ths for confronta-
7. Ibid. tion in preparation for an unwanted Pal-estinian unilateral declaration of 8. According to Hanieh, the Palestini-
statehood. “This method is based on aans were told that the Old C ity wouldsimple premise: ‘to exact a high price,’ ashave a special status entailing Palestinianthe gene ral explained in their peculiarsovereignty over the Chr istian and Muslimlanguage.”Quarters and Israeli sovereignty over the
Jewish and Armenian Quarters. Akram 17 . For an overview of the jigsaw puz-Hanieh, The Camp David Papers (Ramal- zle of Palestinian security forces, see Gra-lah: al-Ayyam Press, 2000), pp. 42–43 [in ham Usher, “The Politics of Internal
Arabic ]. An English-language version of Security: The PA’s New Inte lligence Ser-this text appears in this issue of JPS . vices,” in Dispatches from Palestine (Ster-
ling, VA: Pluto Press, 1999).9. Usher interview with Klein.
10. Uzi Benziman, “Corridors of 18. On the military aspects of the sec-Power—Battle Fatigue,” Ha’Aretz , 3 No- ond in tifada, see Saleh Abdul Jawad, “The
vember 2000. Later in the article, he Intifada’s Mili tary Lessons,” Palestine R e-
writes , “Is rae li and Palestinian sources port , 25 October 2000.
19. The yellow banners of Hizballah, for a boycott on accepting USAID money
also ubiquitous at funerals, have been and on continued participation in sharedraised by nationalist groups rather than Israeli-Palestinian projects. The networkHamas. has also set up a number of task forces,
including one to develop strategies for20. Yasir ‘Abid Rabbuh, al-Ayyam , 1 5the internal situation. Many of the 120October 2000.
member organizations are reviewing their21. See, in particular, Hasan Khader,activities in an attempt to give them rele-“Khaybar, Khaybir ya Yahud,” al-Ayyam ,
vance to the current crisis.6 November 2000.
32. The PLC finally met on 1 Novem-22. Yosi Dahan, Yedi’ot Aharonot , 19ber, but, partly because Israeli check-October 2000 ; see also Zeev Schiff, whopoints prevented Gaza deputies from wrote in Ha’Aretz , 20 Oc tober 2000, thatentering the West Bank, only twelve dep-the two principal reasons that many Israe-uties showed up, and their deliberationslis were shocked by the disturbances are
were confined to messages of solidarity (1) the participation of Arab Israelis andand support (al-Quds and al-Ayyam , 2(2) “the bursting of the balloon of falseNovember 2000). Still, there is no expla-security under which we have been liv-nation as to why the assembly did noting” in terms of the safety of certain roadsmeet earlier given the momentous cir-and highways in Israel.cumstances. On 6 November, a second23. Israeli accusations concerning Pal-session of the PLC was convened simulta-estine TV’s role in “incitement” ignoresneously in Ramallah and Gaza. Both werethe fact that in both intifadas, images on
well attended, and a resolution wasIsrael TV often were the cause of “incite-adopted calling for the formation of anment” of the Palestinian street. Moreover,international protection force and the es-Palestine TV’s m ediocrity and heavily tablishment of an emergency fund forcensored reporting tend to make it thepublic employment (al-Ayyam , 7 Novem-least popular of all stations.ber 2000).24. A point well made by the Econo-
33. George Giacaman, “In the Throesmist ’s Middle East correspondent (21–27of Oslo: Palestinian Society, Civil Society October 2000).and the Future,” in
After Oslo, New Real- 25. UN Special Coordinator’s Office ties, Old Problems , ed. George Giacaman(UNSCO), “The Impact on the Palestinianand Dag J. Lonning (London: Pluto Press,Economy o f Con frontations, Mobility Re-1998), p. 6.strictions, and Border Closures, 28 Sep-
34. For the most extended analysis of tember–26 November 2000,” 30PA rule, see Jamil Hilal, al-Nizam al- November 2000.
Siyasi al-Filastini ba‘d Oslo (The Palestin-26. It should be remembered that dur-ian political system after Oslo) (Beirut:ing the first intifada there was a muchIPS, 1998).smaller but significant public sector,
predominantly of teachers and health 35. Rema Hammami and Penny John- workers employed by the Israeli Civ il Ad- son, “Equality with a Difference: Gende rministration. However, with Israel as their and Citizenship in Transitional Palestine,”
direct employer their salaries were never Social Politics (Fall 1999).under threat as they are now. 36. A good summary of these con-27. UNSCO, “The Impact on the Pales- trasting positions can be gleaned from the
tinian Economy.” proceedings of a conference organized
by Muwatin in Ramallah on 9 December28. Ibid., 6.
2000. Speakers included Yasir ‘Abid Rab-29. For an analysis of this process, seebuh, Mustafa Barghouti, Azmi Bishara,Rema Hammami, “NGOs: The Profession-Ibrahim Daqqaq, George G iacaman, andalization of Politics,” Race and Class 37,Mahmud Nofal (al-Ayyam , 9 Decemberno. 2 (1995).2000).30. Azmi Bishara has described this in
37. For a review of settlers’ reaction,terms of the PA’s “monopolization of see Neri Livneh, “Time to Leave,”public space.”
Ha’Aretz Magazine , 24 November 2000,31. The most active NGO umbrella or-pp. 9–11.ganization, the Palestinian NGO Network,
has thus far limited its ac tions in the cur- 38. Shahar Ginorsar, “A Jewish Major-rent intifada to appeals in the local press ity Supports the Evacuation of Settle-